By Patricia Gallagher Newberry
Enquirer contributor

I read a magazine article a while back telling working mothers how to find a little time for themselves each day.

After getting the kids to bed by 9, the story said, spend an hour picking up the house and getting ready for the next day and then - devote the next hour to you! Curl up with a book, take a bath, enjoy a hobby, just take time for yourself!

At 10 o'clock! After a first shift at a paying job! And another few hours on the parenting shift! Maybe that'd be a good time to start a new garden! Or wallpaper the guest room! Or draft a plan for peace in the Middle East to ship off to the United Nations in the morning.

Or, I know, working moms could do what I do: Answer a few e-mails, pay a couple bills, sign checks and papers for the kids' school, crash in front of Law and Order and call it a night.

'Cause back here on Planet Reality, that's all most moms who work paying jobs have time or energy for come 10 p.m.

A couple decades ago, when women were moving en masse into the workforce, magazines - and society at large - used to talk about the tradeoffs mothers made in trying to raise families and hold down paying jobs at the same time.

Trying to have it all

Today, no one seems to pay much notice. It's as if New Century working mothers are supposed to have somehow figured out how to "have it all" - the marriage, the kids, the job, the house and the "hour for me" at 10.

Well, I guess I skipped that chapter in the Mom Manual. Because I sure haven't figured it out, despite nearly a decade of working, in one form or another, and raising a family.

Instead, I do what a lot of working mothers do:

I get up too early and stay up too late. I eat too much crap - and sometimes serve it for dinner. I fill weekends with errands I can't manage during the week. I run the washing machine from Friday to Sunday night, and the vacuum much less frequently.

I forget to send flowers to a sister just home from surgery. I take a month to visit a friend recovering from a different health crisis. I miss neighborhood gatherings and lose touch with neighborhood friends. I promise myself that I will, I will, meet the two new babies on our street before their first birthdays.

I disappoint my children. I pack peanut butter sandwiches for the son who only likes bagels for lunch, needing a trip to the grocery store.

I lay out a uniform jumper for the daughter who wants to wear the uniform pants, needing a visit to the laundry room. I push and prod all three kids through their afternoon and evening routines, needing that hour at the end of the day for me, if only to answer the e-mails.

Spousal neglect

I neglect my spouse and partner. And he, required at work more hours than me, neglects me in return.

I live by the clock and calendar. I follow my to-do lists to get it all done. I put the hobbies on hold - along with the novels and long soaks in the tub - for my retirement years.

Am I complaining? I like to think of it as dialoguing on important life issues.

Am I willing to give up something? Lemme flip a coin: Heads, I keep the job; tails, I keep the kids.

The fact is I get great satisfaction from work, teaching a next generation of journalists about journalism. And I get great satisfaction raising three kids who, from early indications, look to be turning out all right.

Can a working mother, truly, have it all? If "all" includes adequate time for her kids, her spouse, her family, her friends and herself - along with a spotless house and a properly stocked pantry - then no, no, emphatically no.

I just wanted to talk about that, in case magazine writers and everyone else forgot.

E-mail patti@marriedwchildren.com.